


Hidden Side

by Thunderrrstruck



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Best Friends, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Burton Guster is a Good Bro, Epic Bromance, Gen, LGBTQ Themes, my mind is made up; Shawn is bi bi bi, wholesome support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24666298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderrrstruck/pseuds/Thunderrrstruck
Summary: Shawn learned many things during his adolescence. He learned to lie from his dad. He learned to charm his was through due to his teachers' evaluations. And in high school, he learned how to bury a part of himself down so deep that after a decade of suppression, he still has no idea how to address that side of him.
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster & Shawn Spencer
Comments: 2
Kudos: 80





	Hidden Side

**Author's Note:**

> I woke up with HIGH muse today and immediately started pitter-pattering out this self-indulgent 'Shawn is bi' fic on my phone. I've had the headcanon for some time (there are just too many comments throughout the series to ignore), and now I make it my canon with THIS!
> 
> Hope this can put a smile on someone's face. :)

Shawn had gotten exceptionally good at compartmentalising his many emotions. It was one of the many things he learned during his adolescence. He learned to lie due to his father and learned to charm his way through life because of his teachers. He learned to exclusively pursue girls in high school and bury the other part of him deep, deep down in the dirt where no one could find it.

It all begins to unravel when he saw the new kid at Santa Barbara High School meandering the pier with a couple of friends. Daniel McKaye had dirty blonde hair and undefinable eyes - _are they blue, green, or some shade grey_ \- into which Shawn found himself cannonballing, and once he was submerged in the kaleidoscope colour, it was even harder to focus on the hue. To name it. To make any sort of observations at all.

Shawn sat at the diner table the following night in silence. He could not get the colour out of his mind. Never in his life had he been unable to describe something - the perks of his father's detective lessons. Shawn blinked, slow and steady, and analysed the soup before him (if only to get his mind off of Daniel in the park). Brown, chunky with hidden beans, a light cheesy smell. He lifted the spoon to his mouth but dropped it with a clatter as soon as the liquid touched his lips. He dove for the glass of ice water to his right. The water clumsily sloshes over his face and onto his shirt as he takes big gulp after big gulp.

"What did I tell you about the dinner, Shawn?" his dad says from the stovetop. His tone is one of being on the verge of a lesson or cautionary tale.

"That it's hot," Shawn recites, lowering the glass to the table.

"And shouldn't you have seen the steam wafting out of the bowl?"

"Yeah, dad," Shawn agrees with a sigh. The easiest way to get his father off his back, he realised some time ago, was to just always agree no matter what. After the lecture, he could go out and do whatever: the only thought keeping him compliant enough to make it through the lecture in first place.

Henry swung around the table with his own bowl of soup and a few slices of bread on a plate for the table. "Something's got you distracted, hasn't it?" he inquired and, as usual, is spot on. Shawn presses his lips into a line and glares back.

" _No_ ," he said defiantly. In that moment, he gave himself away.

"As the one who taught you _how_ to lie, I know you can do better than _that_."

"Nothing's wrong! I'm tired!"

"Uh-huh," Henry plays along. "Why are you tired?"

"I guess I didn't sleep or something," Shawn shrugged, layering on the nonchalant so thickly it actually sounded painfully _chalant_.

"You know how I can tell when a perp is lying, Shawn?"

Shawn searched for an answer but couldn't land on anything, so he shook his head and threw out a useless, "by their hairstyle?"

"Perps always keep their lies vague," Henry continued. "They think they can't be contradicted with facts if they keep things vague. But in the end, their flimsy statements always crumble in the face of facts. It’s just one of the signs."

"What are the other signs?" Shawn asked, hoping the question might lead his dad down another train track altogether and take his attention away from what Shawn _really_ did not want anyone finding out.

"Eat your soup before it gets cold, kid," Henry merely replied.

"'Kay, dad," huffed Shawn before ladling up a spoonful of black bean soup and blowing across the surface. His shoulders finally slumped; _Dad's moved on, thank god for that_. Shawn tried to get himself, also, to move on by thinking about his favourite movies instead, but as he shoved his spoon into his mouth, his mind jumped from Breakfast Club to Judd Nelson only to circle back around to Dan. Forcing himself to swallow, he placed the spoon back in the soup and glanced out of the corner of his eye at his father. There, Henry sat, minding his own business dipping a rolled up slice of bread into the soup. Lifting his head, Henry regarded Shawn for a second before breaking into a smirk, a smirk which makes the son freeze and frown.

"It's about a girl, isn't it?"

Shawn's eyes widened as his mind spun with a million and one answers. _So close! What do I do?!_

Outright denial? Too obvious.

Reluctant acceptance? That would only engage his father further.

Change of the topic? In no way was he going to admit that those kaleidoscope eyes did not belong to a female.

"Uhhh, so Gus is coming over on Saturday," he blatantly switched, fingers tightening around his spoon.

"You know, it's perfectly natural, Shawn, to like girls,” Henry said.

_Maybe I should just play dumb._

"It is?"

"Yeah! If you like a girl, you like a girl. The real test now is, what are you going to do about it?"

Suffice it to say, Shawn did nothing about it. For starters, his dad was wrong about one major thing when he gave him that advice. For another, Shawn spent the rest of high school and over a decade after that making strides to protect himself from ruthless torment. He saw what happened to "Gay-den Jaiden" when he was caught staring dreamily at a boy in English class.

It wasn't a crime to want to be cool. It shouldn't be frowned upon to want to be invited to senior parties. As the son of a well known cop, it was hard enough to be taken as someone who is _not_ a stickler for the rules! Shawn had taken extra care to cultivate his reputation as the rebel.

He buried half of himself so far into the back of his mind that for the rest of school, not one of his classmates or friends suspected a thing. When he skipped town before college, he continued the charade, pretending for the next ten years that he was just like everyone else.

A few weeks after he returned to Santa Barbara, he saw him. Of _course_ he did! Daniel McKaye looked just as disorientingly dazzling as ever, if not more. Age really worked for that man. From across the Starbucks, he glimpsed his eyes, and although it was too far away to see the colour, he was already floundering in the unnameable hue. He grappled for his latte on the counter all without turning to see what he was doing.

"Dude, stop staring. It's getting creepy."

Shawn snapped his eyes off beautiful Dan and, instead, angled his gaze towards his best friend in the world. He finally registered where his hand was and froze before he could proceed to knock the whole thing over.

"I wasn't staring," he denied, grasping the paper cup properly and lifting it towards him.

"Okay, fine. _Ogling_ ," Gus amended. "Stop ogling."

Shawn kept his eyes on his latte. After spending enough years with someone, keeping his emotions a private business became nigh impossible; he knew one look into those rich, chocolate eyes would compel him to spill everything.

“Don’t say ‘ogling’,” he said. “Makes you sound like a perverted eskimo.”

“What?”

"If you _must_ know," he said, pretending there was an issue with the lid of the paper cup, "I was wondering what kind of shampoo he uses? I’m thinking I need to up my game if I’m going to be competing against guys like that."

"Please," Gus dismissed and proceeded to mutter, "And I thought your obsession with Judd Nelson was obvious."

"The guy from Breakfast Club?" Shawn prodded after a sip of his latte and subsequent ‘ah’. "Also a man with incredible hair. But I tried the long hair routine. Never again, Gus."

Rolling his eyes, Gus moved past him and for the door, causing Shawn to swirl on the spot and hasten his next few steps to keep up. Once he was level again with Gus, he waited for a follow up reply to Shawn's 'long hair' phase, but oddly enough, no such reply came. Just silence. Silence and a smug expression. Shawn's eyebrows pulled down as he stared at Gus expectantly.

"Come on, you know how I hate silence."

Nothing but smugness ensued.

" _Guuus_!" Shawn whined. He watched the man chuckle as he opened the door to his company car. "Seriously! Don't leave me hanging; just say something!"

"I don't need to."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?"

Without another word, but still looking incredibly smug, Gus slid into the driver's seat and shut the door. He was waiting for Shawn to verbally hang himself, something Shawn was totally capable of doing with or without the knowledge. He let out a "Maaaan, come on," before manoeuvring around the blue hood and taking up his usual position in the passenger seat. The moment he slammed the door, Gus silently put the car in reverse. Shawn couldn't take it anymore.

"Okay. I'll admit. Regarding the Judd Nelson thing: who _didn't_ have a crush on him?"

"Everyone who wasn't a teenaged girl."

Reeling his head back, Shawn decided the view outside his window was easier to look at in the moment. _Was it really that weird of a thing?_ he wondered. Years of pretending had addled his perceptions until he thoroughly believed that finding the same sex attractive was just as normal as breathing air.

"What does this have to do with 'ogling'?" said Shawn. "Which, side note, is still a weird word, and I petition we ban that word from all future conversations."

"Grown men don't stare at other grown men like that."

Shawn made a face of incredulity, preposterity, absolute dumbstruckedness, but no words would follow. The discovery, inevitable as it was, was something Shawn had not prepared for. Perhaps it was his learned habit or his unwillingness to engage in anything real or a mix of the two which drove him to reply in the manner he did:

"What are you getting at, man?"

Gus shifted in his seat. As the Blueberry pulled into an adjacent street, Shawn noticed the crease lines between his eyebrows.

"What is it?”

“Give me a mome–.”

“Just spit it out.”

"Just let me say it, Shawn!"

Shawn watched his best friend take a deep breath and held his tongue for all of three seconds before exploding.

"Will you just drop this nonsense?!"

Gus clicked his tongue at him, causing the pseudo-psychic to evaluate the hypocrisy in his latest statement and sober up some with a frown. He hit the back of his seat with an airy "hmph" and stared straight ahead. He knew what was coming. Inevitable, like all the things he tried to avoid.

"Listen, Shawn. All I want to say is" – he took another deep breath; Shawn heard it, although he didn’t look over – "just because you might like girls _and_ guys, it doesn't mean I'm going to throw out the past few decades of my life or view you as anything less than my best friend."

Shawn couldn't help how large his eyes had gotten. They were round as doughnuts; big, hazel, blue-sprinkled doughnuts. He blinked a couple times to bat down the look of surprise, but more than a trace lingered as he turned his head towards the driver seat.

"You _know_?" he said, horrified.

"I suspected a little in high school," Gus replied, eyes on the traffic light up ahead. "And Dan McKaye? Way out of your league."

“Please, I can _get_ a Dan,” Shawn muttered. He tightened his jaw, unsure how to feel about this rapid flip of the tables. For the next few blocks, he evaluated everything in terms of what he could and could not take solace in. He could take solace in the fact that it changed nothing between him and Gus. He could take solace in the fact that they were far from Daniel McKaye and his ever-changing eyes. Although he honestly had no idea how to address the other side to his attraction save for insubstantial remarks and seemingly-sardonic quips, he could take solace in the fact that he still felt the same as he always had, whether he was in the closet or not.

"Thanks, man," he said, a little quieter than usual. "I mean it."

"You know I'll always support you."

Shawn bobbed his head in an absentminded nod. "Hmm,” was all he answered with before jumping off the heart-to-heart train. “Jerk chicken?"

"You know that's right."


End file.
